Once again, the federal government is trying its hardest to prevent the courts from determining whether it has broken (or is still breaking) the law through the NSA’s wiretapping program.

For nearly four years, the Obama Administration has followed in the Bush administration’s footsteps, invoking national security and a variety of procedural hurdles to shield itself from accountability in courts. In three separate lawsuits that have been churning in the federal courts, the government has used a menu of dodges to block the courts from considering the key underlying question — have they been breaking the law and violating the constitution by warrantlessly surveilling American citizens — over and over again.

And now the Obama Administration wants Congress to extend the broader surveillance powers passed by Congress in 2008.

This morning, the House Judiciary Committee held an important hearing on the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) and the scope of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. The FAA, which gutted privacy protections governing the interception international phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States, is set to expire at the end of the year, and Attorney General Eric Holder says it is his “top priority” to see it renewed.

President Obama had promised during his campaign to demand civil liberties protections and privacy safeguards when the FAA came up for renewal, yet his administration is now demanding Congress to renew it with no changes, despite the fact that the FAA allows for dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications.

This week the House of Representatives is debating CISPA, the dangerous ‘cybersecurity’ bill that threatens to decimate Internet users’ privacy in the name of security. EFF and a wide variety of other groups have been protesting the law’s provisions giving companies the power to read users’ emails and other communications and hand them to the government without any judicial oversight whatsoever—essentially a giant ‘cybersecurity’ exception to all existing privacy laws.

The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.—Wired Magazine, April 2012

Last week, in Wired Magazine, noted author James Bamfordreported on an expansive $2 billion “data center” being built by the NSA in Utah that will house an almost unimaginable amount of data on its servers, along with the world’s fastest supercomputers. Part of the purpose of this new center, according to Bamford, is to store “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’”